In a silver halide photographic light-sensitive material (hereinafter, also referred to simply as “a light-sensitive material”) for subtractive color photography, a color image is formed by dyes of three primary colors of yellow, magenta, and cyan. In the color photography that uses current p-phenylenediamine-series color-developing agents, acylacetoanilide-series compounds are used as yellow couplers. However, the hue of the yellow dyes obtained from these yellow couplers is reddish, due to an inferior sharpness of a peak of the absorption curve at the longer wavelength side (that is, on the absorption curve, the peak in interest has subsidiary absorption at its foot portion at the longer wavelength side), which renders it difficult to obtain a yellow hue with high purity. Further, because the molecular extinction coefficient of the yellow dyes is low, it is necessary, to attain a desired color density, to use larger amounts of both the coupler and the silver halide. The use of such larger amounts of these components has a problem that the resulting increase in thickness of a light-sensitive material sometimes lowers the sharpness of the obtained color image. Further, the above-mentioned dyes are apt to decompose under conditions of high temperature and high humidity, or of irradiation by radiation, and have a weakness of image storability after development processing. Accordingly, it has been desired to improve these weak points.
In order to solve these problems, improvement of acyl groups and anilido groups were proposed on the couplers. Recently, as improved couplers of the conventional acylacetoanilide-series couplers, there were proposed, for example, 1-alkylcyclopropanecarbonyl acetoanilide-series compounds, (for example, JP-A-4-218042 (“JP-A” means unexamined published Japanese patent application)); cyclomalonic acid diamide-type couplers (for example, JP-A-5-11416); pyrrole-2- or 3-yl- or indole-2- or 3-yl-carbonylacetoanilide-series couplers (for example, European Patent Publication Nos. 953870A1,

wherein Q represents a group of nonmetallic atoms that form a 5- to 7-membered ring in combination with the —N═C—N(R1)—; R1 and R2 each independently represents a substituent; R4 represents an alkyl group; m represents an integer of 0 to 4; when m is 2 or more, the multiple R2s may be the same or different, and the R2s may bond each other to form a ring; and X represents a hydrogen atom, or a group capable of being split-off upon a coupling reaction with an oxidized product of a developing agent; and when R4 represents a primary alkyl group, R1 represents —(CH2)3O—R101 in which R101 is an alkyl group having 4 to 8 carbon atoms.
Further, the present invention is a silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material having at least one yellow dye-forming coupler represented by formula (I) in at least one layer provided on a support.
Other and further features and advantages of the invention will appear more fully from the following description.